Growing up in Mississippi, I knew almost nothing about NASCAR racing. As a kid, I thought it was little more than watching cars go around a track in what seemed to me a rather boring circle. I did have one experience with Saturday night short track racing when a friend of mine invited me to ride to Mobile Speedway. That was it!
Then, by God’s Providence, I met a good-looking woman named Kim at the University of Georgia. We fell in love, later got married, and suddenly NASCAR wasn’t something happening on a television screen anymore. It became family.
Kim’s father is Jody Ridley of Chatsworth, Georgia.
Over the years, I came to understand that the man I knew as my father-in-law wasn’t simply someone who had once raced NASCAR. I began to understand what he and his generation of racers represented—a time when stock-car racing was built in garages and machine shops, on Saturday-night short tracks and along the highways connecting small Southern towns.
And the more I learned about Jody’s career, the more one question stayed with me: How is this man’s complete racing career not part of the NASCAR Hall of Fame conversation?
I recognize my bias. Jody Ridley is my father-in-law, and I love him. But family affection doesn’t create racing statistics. The record has to stand on its own. And Jody’s does.
Most racing fans know about the legendary Alabama Gang. From Hueytown came Bobby Allison, Donnie Allison, Red Farmer, Neil Bonnett, Davey Allison and others who became part of NASCAR history. They deserve that recognition.
But just across the state line, Georgia developed a remarkable racing tradition of its own. Call them the Georgia Gang.
The Alabama Gang and this Georgia racing fraternity shared something important. They weren’t created in corporate boardrooms. They were forged in garages, machine shops and short tracks. They came from a NASCAR era when racers built cars with their own hands, loaded them onto trailers, drove through the night, raced, repaired what they broke and went somewhere else to race again. Few men represent that disappearing breed better than Jody Ridley.
From Dawsonville, Chatsworth and the mountains of North Georgia came the Sosebees, the Elliotts and the Ridleys. George Elliott and his sons Ernie, Dan and Bill built one of America’s great family racing operations. Bill Elliott eventually became NASCAR’s 1988 Cup champion and a NASCAR Hall of Famer.
And the Ridley and Elliott families weren’t merely neighbors in Georgia racing history. Their stories were intertwined.
Biddle Ridley, Jody’s brother –Anthony, Jody’s son, and longtime crew chief; all a part of the Jody Ridley Racing team. Biddle raced for Ernie Elliott and helped Bill Elliott during Bill’s formative racing years. Anthony was also a part of Bill’s NASCAR team and quickly became known as a decorated and speedy tire changer. George Elliott put Jody behind the wheel of one of his NASCAR cars in the early 1970s.
The connections between the Ridley and Elliott families run especially deep. Even before Bill Elliott became ‘Awesome Bill from Dawsonville,’ the Ridleys were part of the racing world that helped shape him.
Then came a remarkable moment at Daytona.
Bill Elliott arrived at the 1989 Daytona 500 as NASCAR’s defending Cup champion but suffered a broken wrist in a practice crash. When the Elliott family needed someone they trusted to help put their famous No. 9 Ford on the racetrack, they called Jody Ridley.
Think about that. When one of NASCAR’s great racing families needed someone to climb into the reigning champion’s race car at Daytona, they trusted Jody Ridley.
But Jody’s case rests on far more than that moment.
In 1980, Jody became NASCAR’s Cup Series Rookie of the Year driving for legendary independent owner Junie Donlavey. The following season, he finished fifth in the NASCAR Cup championship standings, competing in an era filled with names such as Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough.
Then came Dover.
On May 17, 1981, Jody drove Donlavey’s No. 90 Ford to victory in the Mason-Dixon 500, holding off Bobby Allison and Dale Earnhardt.
It would be Jody’s only Cup victory. But calling it simply “one Cup win” misses the significance.
Five hundred miles. Five hundred laps. One of NASCAR’s toughest racetracks. The Mason-Dixon 500 at Dover. Neil Bonnett dominated much of the race. Cale Yarborough was a contender. But NASCAR races aren’t won by the driver who was supposed to win them. They are won by the driver who is there at the finish. And Jody Ridley was there.
Ridley drove Junie Donlavey’s No. 90 Ford to victory, holding off Bobby Allison and Dale Earnhardt. It became Ridley’s only NASCAR Cup victory, but describing it merely as ‘one Cup win’ misses what happened that afternoon.
Donlavey fielded cars in NASCAR’s premier division for decades and made 863 Cup starts. Hall of Famers drove his cars: David Pearson, Fred Lorenzen, Joe Weatherly, Benny Parsons and Buck Baker. Yet after more than eight hundred NASCAR Cup starts, there was only one premier-series victory for Donlavey Racing. Only one driver ever took a Donlavey Cup car to Victory Lane. Jody Ridley.
NASCAR wasn’t built exclusively at Daytona, Talladega and Charlotte. It was built on Saturday nights at short tracks across America by racers who built cars, hauled them from town to town, raced them, repaired them and returned the next week to do it again. Jody represents that generation.
The Alabama Gang deserves its celebrated place in NASCAR history. But Georgia has a racing story worth remembering too—the Elliotts, the Sosebees, the Ridleys and the generations surrounding them.
I’m certainly not an impartial observer. I’m the man who married Jody Ridley’s daughter.
In 2007, Jody was inducted into The Georgia Racing Hall of Fame.
But after becoming part of this family and learning the history I knew nothing about as a boy, I’ve become convinced of something:
Approximately 500 victories. Seven championships in NASCAR’s All-Pro division. NASCAR Cup Rookie of the Year. Fifth in the Cup standings. And the only man ever to put Junie Donlavey’s Cup car in Victory Lane.
Those accomplishments speak for themselves.
ALABAMA HAD HUEYTOWN. GEORGIA HAD DAWSONVILLE, CHATSWORTH AND THE NORTH GEORGIA SHORT TRACKS.
It’s time for NASCAR to remember the entire career of Jody Ridley.
The Alabama Gang has rightly been celebrated as one of racing’s great communities. Georgia deserves to have its interconnected racing families remembered with the same affection: the Elliotts, the Sosebees, the Ridleys and the pioneers who came before them.
They represent two neighboring Southern racing cultures that helped build NASCAR from the ground up. And among those names stands a quiet racer from Chatsworth, Georgia, who won approximately 500 short-track races, dominated NASCAR’s All-Pro ranks, became NASCAR’s Cup Rookie of the Year, finished fifth in the Cup standings and delivered one of the most memorable independent-team victories in NASCAR history.
His name, again, is Jody Ridley.
Now there should be one more place where the name Jody Ridley appears:
NASCAR HALL OF FAME.
It is time.
